300 Miles to Galveston (8 page)

“Down here!” The echo disoriented him.

“Here!”

He saw Bane waving, about 500 feet to the south, near a creek. Sophie waved, and ran to her father. As she got close, he said, “Wait. You’re running?” They hugged. “I was so freaking worried about you! What happened?” She hugged harder. “Wait wait wait. How are you running like that?”

“Oh! It’s the weirdest thing. It just healed.” She showed him her knee. There was a light scar, no stitches.

“The stitches fell out?”

“I guess. I didn’t see them when... those guys came.”

She told her father the story.

Bane had heard them coming and hidden behind the bench with his pistol crossbow. When the boys approached Sophie, who was still asleep, Bane stood and told them to leave. One boy put his hands up and started walking off, but the other grabbed Sophie and laughed. “Whatchu gonna do, gimpy? Shoot her?” Before she was fully conscious, Sophie dug her nails into his ribcage, and bit two of his fingers off as he tried to slap her away.

“I think I swallowed one,” she said.

He looked at her eyes. They were still green, but there was a hazel patch at 10 o’clock on her left eye, and at 2 o’clock on her right eye.

“You feel OK?”

“Yeah. Actually, I feel great.”

“Yeah,” Kurt said. “Me too. And I shouldn’t.”

“Sorry to scare you like that,” Bane said as he approached. “But where the hell did you go?”

Kurt tossed him the Advil bottle. “Gas station. Like I said.”

“There’s blood in your hair.”

“Yeah, but it’s OK. I dunno how to explain it. Those boys beat me badly. Hit me back here... and then I couldn’t see. But when I woke up this morning, I was fine. Took me a minute to remember everything, but it’s come back to me, now. Where are those thugs, anyway?”

Bane kept his eyes level. “One ran off. The other we…” he drew his finger across his neck, “and threw in the creek.”

“You get your crossbow bolt back?”

“Never fired it.”

Sophie was still hugging Kurt. He placed his hand on her head, and looked to Bane, who nodded.

“Dad, you stink.”

They walked down to the creek and rinsed out their things. As they washed, Bane tuned the radio.

“This is the USS
Fort Worth
at Coast Guard Station Galveston. We have room for 35 survivors. We will update the count as we accept new passengers. Message repeats.” 

Chapter 8: Fearfully and Wonderfully

They followed the access road to Central Expressway, Highway 75, one of the three north-south arteries of Dallas. Where they connected were a series of bridged spirals, but they stayed on the ground, peddling smoothly. There was a gentle uphill climb, then down for the next couple of miles. A few cars were abandoned on the highway, and once they saw a confused deer, but that was all. No people. No trash. It looked like people had just given up and walked away.

When they saw the exit for Knox-Henderson, Bane spoke up.

“Used to be some great stores down there. You ever go to the store at the back of Weir’s? Neat stuff. Candy, quirky toys. Hard to explain what they had – it was just cool.”

Kurt nodded. “If I really liked a lady, I’d get her something from Urban Flower.”

They didn’t pause as they passed the exits, but they talked about the times they’d had at Mockingbird Station and Lower Greenville. Finally, they climbed the slope up to the end of 75, where in another turn it would become 45 South to Houston. To the right stood downtown Dallas, silent. Fountain Place, a late-modernist skyscraper shaped like a stretching crystal, reflected the sky and clouds, while the Chase Building, with its bifurcated, convex roof, looked like a giant penis made out of Legos.

The highway curved left, and then right, and then became 45 South to Houston. They all raised their hands together in a silent
woo!
.

The day was beautiful. There was about a 5 mile per hour wind from the west, not enough to require constant steering adjustment, and as they passed through South Dallas into Dallas County, the land began to look like Texas again: old trees, broad fields, and wide skies. Crows cawed, and wild horses watched them pass.

Horses.

Kurt looked to Bane. “You ever ride horses?”

“No. We had goats. You?”

“Other than trail rides at summer camp, no.”

They chuckled for a long while. Two native-born Texans who couldn’t ride. Still, their expressions confessed that the thought of catching and riding three of those 1,000 pound animals was hilarious. “We would so get killed,” Kurt laughed.

“How far are we going today?” said Sophie.

“Let’s get to Ennis,” said Kurt. “About another 30 miles, no more hills.”

“I can go farther than that.”

“I’m sure you can, but the rest of us might need a break.” The truth was that he didn’t feel like he’d need a break. He felt great. It would be disturbing if it weren’t wonderful.

Bane looked at them. “I’m glad y’all are better, but I wish I understood it. I’ve got a bruise on my forearm from something I did a week ago, and it still hasn’t healed. You two... I’ve never seen that before.

Kurt said, “I really don’t understand it, either.”

“Have y’all always been like that?”

“No. I thought when Sophie’s knee was slashed, that’d be it. End of our journey.”

“Did you guys take some medicine, or eat something unusual?”

Kurt and Sophie looked at each other. “No,” said Sophie. “Water, pecans, dog meat... nothing special.”

“Well, if there are cosmic rays hitting us, I hope they give me super powers too, and not cancer,” said Bane.

They all laughed, but Bane kept chewing it over in his mind.

* * *

Everyone had been quiet for a long time. Sophie broke the silence.

“What’s in Ennis?”

“A Dairy Queen,” said Kurt.

“Drag strip,” said Bane.

“What’s a drag strip?”

“A place they used to race cars. Quarter-mile straight run, two cars race, fastest wins.”

“Oh. I thought it had something to do with men who dressed as women.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Until the teachers quit showing up, Staley Middle School.”

“Did they quit before the power grid went dark?”

“Yeah. One told me she was going back to her dad’s farm in Colorado.”

“Why are we stopping in Ennis, Dad?”

There it was again.
Dad
. Not
daddy
, thought Kurt.

“It’s just a goal. There’s nothing special there that I know of. By now, I’m sure all the gas stations have been picked dry, but there might be a store or two with some kind of supplies left, if we wanted to look around.”

Sophie thought back to what had happened the last time one of them went to look for supplies.

“I’m good. Let’s not stop in Ennis. Let’s stop on the other side of it.”

“OK,” said Kurt. “That won’t add more than five minutes.”

Whether Bane had needed more breaks than usual, or he and Sophie felt better than usual, Kurt could not be sure, but it took the remainder of their daylight to get to Ennis. As night came, they saw a big, yellow glow from the west side of the highway.

“What is that?” said Sophie.

“The old drive through,” said Bane.

Drive-throughs had been big in the 1950s and 60s, then died out, but made a resurgence in Ennis in the 1990s which lasted until the 2020s. People liked to drive out, especially in pickup trucks, back them into their spots and lay out with mattresses, couches, hibachis, and Igloo coolers full of Coke and Dr Pepper. Kids would run around and play, teenagers would make out, and older folks would watch the kids and the movie.

On a nice night like tonight, there’d be several hundred folks gathered to watch whatever was showing. Sometimes it was the latest blockbuster, but more often the movies were old B horror movies with little cursing and only hints of nudity. Something about the open sky and the social gathering made anything put up there special, while at the same time making anything too cerebral seem out of place. Most folks around Ennis would rather watch a mutated lobster chase a girl until her white t-shirt got wet than listen to some guy with no real problems lament his ennui.

As they got closer, they could see a giant shadow waver across the screen. It was a cross. A man was talking, though they couldn’t make out the words this far away. As they got closer they found dozens of people were walking towards the drive in, looking tired but friendly. Some asked where they were from, and they said Dallas, and the usual response was, “Welcome.”

Finally, one person said, “Are you here to hear Pastor Wilks?”

“
Tom
Wilkes?” said Kurt.

“That’s right. I’m not usually much for religion, but he’s good. I come and hear him twice a week.”

“Tom Wilkes was Travis’ mentor,” Kurt said to Sophie.

“Y’all ought to come. People share food and water. It’s nice.”

Bane and Kurt looked at each other and shrugged.

They realized as they got off the highway and followed the people that it wasn’t the minister’s voice they were hearing from the highway – it was the crowd reading in response. Each had a hand-written copy, shared among two or three.

Just like a century before, here was a service being led within the glow of kerosene and the crunch of sawdust.

The responsive reading ended as they settled into the congregation, and Tom Wilkes took the podium, flanked in hurricane lamps. Behind him, a small cross before a lamp cast a large shadow across the screen. Tom was in his 70s, bald with short grey hair on the sides, clean-shaven. He spoke slowly, giving the crowd time to absorb his intention, rushing nothing, holding everything. The crowd of 400 didn’t so much as cough.

“There is in our souls a piece of hell. If it weren’t for the restraints of God’s love, it would burst into fire, and ignite the very creation.

“There is set into every one of us the foundation for our torments. It is our sins, each one a seed that would blossom into flame if its care were left to us alone.

“These flames are violent, eager to break our skins and spread their burning corruption to our neighbor, and his neighbors,” he said, pointing at a young man, “and her neighbors,” he said, pointing to a middle-aged woman.

“In Isaiah 57:20 our souls are compared to storms,

“But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

“Water and dirt from without would be soothing, compared to what burns within.

“For a time, God has restrained us, as Christ calmed the sea, as if to say ‘Here, and no further.’ “Now God has withdrawn that restraining power, and we – we are ready to burst.”

An Amen came from the crowd.

“We are fearfully and wonderfully made to suffer, without God’s mercy.”

Another Amen.

“Our corruption is boundless, reaching beyond this destroyed world into the next, polluting even Heaven from where God reigns, and waits.

“We have no need of being cast into Hell. We shall become hell, each of us a burning coal, setting alight creation with our every step.

“Unless we beg – beg – beg for God’s mercy.”

Some people raised their palms to the sky. Some closed their eyes.

“He is waiting to offer it to you, right now. Will you come forward? It doesn’t matter if you’ve begged before. Beg again. Be reunited, again.”

Kurt frowned. It was a powerful sermon, but he had heard it before, a long time ago. Where?

They waited until the service was over, and found themselves introduced to Reverend Tom, and fed some very good chili, while they relayed greetings from his former assistant, Travis.

Kurt waited until they had a moment alone, and smiled.

“Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”

Rev. Tom smiled back. “You’re good. Yes, I’m cribbing from Jonathan Edwards. I’ve had to give a sermon every day for the last two years. These people are desperate, and hurting, and I’m out of ideas. Thought I’d steal from the best.”

“Shakespeare did the same with Hamlet.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It was a Danish folktale, Prince Amleth. He cleaned it up and set it to iambic pentameter.”

“I cut about a hundred pages of Edward’s hell pits, and focused on God’s mercy.”

“Good call. It really was good, what you did there. With the fire and the cross, I was afraid I was walking into a Klan rally.”

“Ha! Yeah, it’s different without lights and pews and piano, but it seems to work.”

“No, really. I’m being a smart aleck, but you really are doing something good here. These people have hope. They’re the nicest folks we’ve met since we left Frisco.”

“Hope,” he said. “Hope. We share the wine and bread, the shed blood and the broken body. But that’s not where the hope is. The open tomb – that’s where the hope is.”

“Is that where we are now?” said Kurt. “Has the world become an open tomb?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “Something is coming. I have seen these hard times make some people into the best of us, and others into monsters. I’m not talking about the risen bodies, those ones we call Angels and Devils – I’m talking about those normal human beings who are facing tremendous challenges, and deciding, each for himself, who he is going to be. It is so much easier to be evil than good.”

Kurt offered Tom a cigarette – one of the yellow box of American Spirits – and he gladly accepted. “Take a few. We’re heading out in the morning.”

“Thanks. Haven’t seen these in months. No junk in these reservation smokes. Just tobacco.”

They smoked and watched the moon and stars for a while.

“You know,” said Tom, “I never took the Revelation literally. I remember all that Hal Lindsey crap from the 1970s,
The Late Great Planet Earth
, from when I was a kid. Boogey man stories for the easily excited and easily misled. But I can’t say what we’re living through today is all that different. I don’t try to map it all to this passage or that. But you have to admit – something profound is happening.”

“Yes sir, it is.” He didn’t know why he called him sir. It wasn’t the playful Texas use, where you call a friend “sir” just for fun or as a sign of agreement. It was genuine, and it surprised him.